Dedication of the new Tom Lea Elementary School
March 30, 2010
Following is a speech by Adair Margo for the dedication of Tom Lea Elementary School.
It is a great thing standing in front of this beautiful school named for the artist Tom Lea. It is appropriate that it is on the east side of Mount Franklin since that is the side where Tom Lea lived and the side that he preferred. Tom wrote in his autobiography that “Sarah and I live on the east side of the mountain. It is the sunrise side, not the sunset side. It is the side to see the day that is coming, not the side to see the day that is gone. The best day is the day coming, with the work to do, with the eyes wide open, with the heart grateful.” Even when he was a little boy, Tom Lea saw Mount Franklin right out the front window of his home – and it gave him a sense of belonging. He saw it at the end of his life, too, outside his studio window and remembered Carl Sandburg’s quote that “a mountain is something that is fastened down, something you can count on.”
I was lucky to record Tom Lea’s oral history in 1995 – when he was eighty-eight years old- and I remember so many things he told me.
His dad was the Mayor of El Paso during the Mexican Revolution from 1915-1917. Many people from Mexico were moving to El Paso because of the violence and there was a lot of suffering –just like today. One of the reasons was that Pancho Villa and the revolucionarios had evicted so many people from their homes and they fled north. Pancho Villa didn’t like the Mayor of El Paso at all – they had had some words. In fact, Villa put a price of $1,000 in gold on Mayor Lea’s head and threatened to kidnap his sons. So when Tom and his brother, Joe, walked to Lamar Elementary School on Montana, they went with policemen to protect them.
Tom Lea’s life was an adventurous one and - since his Dad was mayor - he got to do great things. Like stay overnight at the fire station on Rio Grande Street, sliding down the pole and riding in the fire wagon. There were lots of troops at Fort Bliss and a camp along the border where the train tracks are now, south of I-10. It was called Camp Cotton and the soldiers slept in tents. When Tom was nine he got to sleep in a tent with the General’s aide. Also, up on Pill Hill at the base of Mount Franklin he and his friends would watch the Mexican Revolution through a telescope. Tom remembered seeing one of the battles for Juarez and a man getting shot and dropping over and another one grabbing his gun and taking off with it. He never forgot his first encounter with war.
In school he remembered his first grade teacher named Miss Lillian Cole who was tall and skinny and who taught him the alphabet. He said she had a big mason jar full of lentils and gave her students watercolor pans full of them. She would write an “a” on the chalkboard on his desk, and then he put lentils around the “a.” Then he would clear the lentils, putting them back in the pan and erase the “a” and Miss Cole would write “b.” And Tom would take the lentils and put them around the “b.” Whatever Miss Cole did, it worked with Tom Lea because he had beautiful handwriting his whole life.
He was left handed and his fifth grade teacher – who was named Eula Strain – went to the Baptist Church. My great-grandfather was the minister of that church and baptized Tom Lea when he was eight years old! It was Miss Strain who noticed Tom’s interest and talent in art – but when she said to his mother “It’s funny to watch that little left hand,” it burned him up. Back then they tried to make left handed children learn to use their right hands, but Mrs. Lea let Miss Strain know that she wanted Tom to remain left-handed.
There were teachers in El Paso who were especially helpful to young Tom Lea, his art teacher Gertrude Evans, and his English teachers Jeannie M. Frank and Fanny Foster at El Paso High School. Tom said that Miss Evans really encouraged him in art and chose him to work on the school annual called “The Spur.” His English teachers taught him everything he tried to use later as a writer, and he said they were wonderful. Another person who opened his eyes to a wider world was the public librarian – Maud Durlin Sullivan. Tom Lea never forgot these women who taught him, and he mentioned them by name in the oral history I recorded.
Tom went on to do great things – becoming a muralist, an illustrator, a World War II artist correspondent for Life Magazine – traveling over 100,000 miles to every continent. He wrote and illustrated two novels – the Wonderful Country and the Brave Bulls – that were on the New York Times bestseller list with Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck, and were made into motion pictures. Both premiered at the Plaza Theatre downtown – The Wonderful Country starring Robert Mitchum and Julie London and the Brave Bulls starring Mel Ferrer and Miroslava. Tom Lea wrote and illustrated other books on many subjects including the history of the mammoth King Ranch. Just yesterday I received a call from an e-book marketplace wanting to know if they could have the rights to this history. The New York agent said that Tom Lea’s history of the King Ranch has the highest demand of any out-of-print book of history.
It’s impossible to say that Tom Lea was this or that, because he was so many things. He painted portraits, landscapes and war pictures, never using one single style. He said he was never interested in a Tom Lea style – but in the style his subject demanded.
He also used the words his subjects demanded as an extraordinary writer. In describing El Paso he wrote that he loved it for the intensity of its sunlight, the clarity of its sky, the hugeness of its space, its revealed structure of naked earth’s primal form, without adornment. I’ve used many of his words as my own, to help me describe a place that I love.
The children attending Tom Lea Elementary are very fortunate – not only because of their school’s namesake and what they can learn about this great man, but also because Mrs. Blanca Garcia – the Principal- and Crystal Acosta – the Librarian- take such interest. Like the teachers who inspired Tom Lea, they and their colleagues at Tom Lea Elementary will always open the eyes of their students to the wonder of life. To the privilege of living in this place where so many have come before us.
When Crystal Acosta told me that the students were learning about Tom Lea’s great mural in the Federal Courthouse downtown, called Pass of the North – I called two friends of Tom Lea’s: Sugar Goodman who spoke at the groundbreaking of this school, and my mother – Betty Ruth Wakefield Haley – whose grandfather baptized him. They contributed to a reproduction of this mural that will be put on the wall of the cafeteria for students to see everyday. We’re going to unroll it now, and I want to share the inscription in closing: Oh Pass of the North, Now the Old Giants are Gone, We Little Men Live Where Heroes Once Walked the Inviolate Earth.
Who knows what giants may come out of Tom Lea Elementary? Thank you for inviting me to come here today.
